According to Forbes Paramount just issued another denial in response to the Financial Times article about switching to Blu-Ray, which is super weird when taken alongside their statement that they won't be announcing any new HD-DVD titles.

Most likely posturing until the lawyers work out the details so they don't violate anything in the contract. I mean, thats my guess.

Yeah, they'll keep denying it until it's true.

The Digital Bits is now saying that Universal is possibly poised to switch as well, and that retailers are already planning on phasing out their HD-DVD support. No clue if any of that is true either but you have to think that with all these rumours swirling around that something might happen.

According to Forbes Paramount just issued another denial in response to the Financial Times article about switching to Blu-Ray, which is super weird when taken alongside their statement that they won't be announcing any new HD-DVD titles.

Most likely posturing until the lawyers work out the details so they don't violate anything in the contract. I mean, thats my guess.

Yeah, they'll keep denying it until it's true.

The Digital Bits is now saying that Universal is possibly poised to switch as well, and that retailers are already planning on phasing out their HD-DVD support. No clue if any of that is true either but you have to think that with all these rumours swirling around that something might happen.

Ooh I liked that digitalbits article. Now I just need a better jump-in deal from Blu Ray and my resolve is toast!

Sony did singlehandedly do this. They stepped away from the bargaining table and opted to force the studio houses, and general public, to pay for the HD war. As of right now they are selling a product to people that has not as of yet been completely defined.

Look at HDTV and it's "HDTV ready" sets that are barely HD compliant. Think of all the players out there for BD that need upgrading and how many consumers may be stuck with hardware that simply can't comply with the final product; let's hope they have some sort of firmware distribution on movie titles (as not everyone has internet, and not all players have network connectivity) and that it doesn't bork the players; it's not like Sony has earned trust after the RootKit fiasco.

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

Sony did singlehandedly do this. They stepped away from the bargaining table and opted to force the studio houses, and general public, to pay for the HD war. As of right now they are selling a product to people that has not as of yet been completely defined.

This is why it sucks. I don't like the way the entire thing was handled. Something is rotten in Denmark.

Sony did singlehandedly do this. They stepped away from the bargaining table and opted to force the studio houses, and general public, to pay for the HD war. As of right now they are selling a product to people that has not as of yet been completely defined.

Why does it matter that Sony stepped away from the table? Why shouldn't we blame Toshiba for compromising more during negotiations? Both parties were in their rights to do whatever they want. They couldn't come to an agreement, despite numerous attempts, so they decided to put both to market and see what happened.

Sony "forced" studios? That's a joke. One of the bigger sources of contention between the two formats is additional copy protection and region coding. Both of those are things that the studios on the Blu-Ray side were in favor of. Indeed, it was the additional copy protection that was instrument in getting Fox on the Blu-Ray side in the first place.

If the studios wanted to support HD-DVD then they could have, with the obvious exception of Sony's own studio. If it had been every studio with HD-DVD versus Sony as the lone Bluray studio then the format war would have ended that day.

People like to joke about all of Sony's failed formats but it also weakens any arguments to be had about Sony using their weight to force studios and consumers to adopt a format they aren't interested in.

Sony did singlehandedly do this. They stepped away from the bargaining table and opted to force the studio houses, and general public, to pay for the HD war. As of right now they are selling a product to people that has not as of yet been completely defined.

Look at HDTV and it's "HDTV ready" sets that are barely HD compliant. Think of all the players out there for BD that need upgrading and how many consumers may be stuck with hardware that simply can't comply with the final product; let's hope they have some sort of firmware distribution on movie titles (as not everyone has internet, and not all players have network connectivity) and that it doesn't bork the players; it's not like Sony has earned trust after the RootKit fiasco.

Dude, for the 47th time, stop spreading this bullshit. It.is.factually incorrect. The story goes something like this:

Quote

In an attempt to avoid starting a war, the Blu-ray Disc Association and the DVD Forum attempted to negotiate a compromise in early 2005. One of the issues was that the Blu-ray Disc camp wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-J), while the DVD Forum was promoting Microsoft's "iHD" (which became HDi). A much larger issue, though, was the physical formats of the discs themselves; the Blu-ray Disc member companies did not want to risk losing billions of dollars in royalties as they had done with standard DVD. An agreement seemed close, but negotiations proceeded slowly.

On August 22, 2005, the Blu-ray Disc Association and DVD Forum announced that the negotiations to unify their standards had failed. Rumours surfaced that an "unnamed partner" had pressured Toshiba to stick with HD DVD[widely thought to be Microsoft] —in spite of Blu-ray Disc's strong support among Hollywood studios and some analysts saying that HD DVD's days were numbered—but these rumours were denied by the parties involved; instead, the same reasons of physical format incompatibility were cited. At the end of September, Microsoft and Intel jointly announced their support for HD DVD. Yahoo News at the time reported that Toshiba had walked away from the bargaining table.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) made a last attempt to broker a peace between Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft. The company demanded that the Blu-ray Disc Association adopt Microsoft's HDi instead of its own Java solution, and that Blu-ray Disc adopt a mandatory managed copy feature. If the demands weren't met, HP threatened to support HD DVD instead. HP wanted it's own proprietary features that supported HDi, and Sony was not interested to giving in to pressure from Microsoft. The deal was not accepted.

I am not even going to bother posting the history of how Toshiba managed to emerge victorious and take almost all of the manufacturing and royalties from the unified DVD format from Sony and Philips.

Sony did singlehandedly do this. They stepped away from the bargaining table and opted to force the studio houses, and general public, to pay for the HD war. As of right now they are selling a product to people that has not as of yet been completely defined.

This is why it sucks. I don't like the way the entire thing was handled. Something is rotten in Denmark.

It doesn't suck because that's bullshit. Spend 5 minutes reading up on stuff instead of buying into conspiracy crap.

it's funner to point to sony as an evil corporation among saints. imagine the other guys as being non-profitable charities with no stakeholders and it will be easy to see how evil sony can be, what with it's profit-mindedness and industry friendly technologies.

then remember what it was like when the ps1 was the underdog and how much nintendo and sega were the bad guys. remember Corporate entities, if you get too big or too successful, we will hate you for it.

Personally, I'm just glad to see a potential end to this format war. I've slowed down my purchases of DVD over the last year or so, and I'd prefer to start investing in the next-gen format. I've got a great DVD player I won't be parting with anytime soon, but I'm now seriously considering picking up a PS3 as (primarily) a blu-ray player. From the sound of things, it's upgradable via firmware and I kind of like the idea that Sony is supplementing the price of a PS3 by eating some of the costs of the hardware.

It seems as though the writing is pretty much on the wall for HD-DVD.

The big question now: Once hardware prices come down, will consumers start to adopt the Blu-ray format or will they skip this generation entirely?

Well I think the point he was making is that you CAN get a a Blu-ray player for only $150 and you can get a game console for only $250 on top of that. Of course it's true that perhaps he doesn't want a game console-but then he'd be posting on the wrong forums!

Sort of ... I was wrong that Sony was to blame for the whole deal. Toshiba ultimately pulled back, and then HP put forth a last ditch attempt to bridge the gap and Sony were the last to "walk away" from the bargaining table.

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

Sort of ... I was wrong that Sony was to blame for the whole deal. Toshiba ultimately pulled back, and then HP put forth a last ditch attempt to bridge the gap and Sony were the last to "walk away" from the bargaining table.

Because...HP...put forth...a standard...that would make them and...Microsoft...a lot...of money...and shaft...sony.

Are you having reading comprehension issues lately? You were, in the entirety, completely wrong and misinformed about how it went down.

Sort of ... I was wrong that Sony was to blame for the whole deal. Toshiba ultimately pulled back, and then HP put forth a last ditch attempt to bridge the gap and Sony were the last to "walk away" from the bargaining table.

Because...HP...put forth...a standard...that would make them and...Microsoft...a lot...of money...and shaft...sony.

Are you having reading comprehension issues lately? You were, in the entirety, completely wrong and misinformed about how it went down.

how's that different than Sony setting a standard that will make them lots of money?

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Because I can,also because I don't care what you want.XBL: OriginalCeeKayWii U: CeeKay

Several members of the Blu-ray organization's Board of Directors who had originally pledged to support Blu-ray Disc later also supported HD DVD, such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, and LG.

So HP, who was originally on the board of directors for BLU RAY, is in fact an HD-DVD only supporter? Good fact finding bub. You ask me to read up on it, I do, admit to being misinformed on the Sony responsibility of the first falling out but point out where I had gotten my impression from, and then show where Sony was the last one to back out of it.

Oh, and Gellar, I'm excellent at eating crow. I had chicken balls from the chinese food place downtown last week.

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"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners." - Johnny Carson

Why not purchase a worthwhile blu-ray player / gaming console for a few more bucks?

Honestly, while I wish Sony much success I can't justify owning two consoles. Currently, I have a PC, 360 and a PSP(which I love btw) for my gaming needs. I was waiting for a clear winner of the format war before I invested any money into them. I have a HDTV now I just need a cheap and reliable player. If it blu-ray so be it, but I'm not spending 400+ on a Blu-ray player

Several members of the Blu-ray organization's Board of Directors who had originally pledged to support Blu-ray Disc later also supported HD DVD, such as Hewlett-Packard, Samsung, and LG.

So HP, who was originally on the board of directors for BLU RAY, is in fact an HD-DVD only supporter? Good fact finding bub. You ask me to read up on it, I do, admit to being misinformed on the Sony responsibility of the first falling out but point out where I had gotten my impression from, and then show where Sony was the last one to back out of it.

Oh, and Gellar, I'm excellent at eating crow. I had chicken balls from the chinese food place downtown last week.

Ok, lets pretend I am speaking to you as if you can even pretend to be objective about something you have woefully misrepresented time and again. Let's all presume, against all visible evidence, that you understand that the last party to withdraw from a negotiation is not de facto responsible for the failure of that negotiation. Presuming we can come to a basic understanding about this (which I doubt given the rhetoric), lets move on to your completely subjective portrayal of HP's attempt to "end" the war.

Quote

Hewlett-Packard (HP) made a last attempt to broker a peace between Blu-ray Disc Association and Microsoft. The company demanded that the Blu-ray Disc Association adopt Microsoft's HDi [Microsoft, one of Sony's chief competitors. Also thought to be the money behind HD-DVD's refusal to support a nearly overwhelming desire to adopt the blu-laser standard] instead of its own Java solution, and that Blu-ray Disc adopt a mandatory managed copy feature. If the demands weren't met, HP threatened to support HD DVD instead. [Threatening one side of a negotiation is often seen as an equitable, third party attempt to negotiate an end to a dispute. Especially when you have finanical interest in HDi.]